Piano Sonata Hob. XVI/20

History#

The work was the first of Haydn’s that he titled Sonata. He had called his earlier multi-movement works for solo keyboard “divertimentos” or “partitas”. It was not until later that these works also assumed the title of Sonata. The sonata was published by Artaria in 1780 in a set of six sonatas dedicated to the sisters Katharina and Marianna Auenbrugger.

Structure#

The sonata is in three movements: The first movement is in sonata form. The movement’s exposition and recapitulation are in tripartite structures, the parts of which the Finnish musicologist Lauri Suurpää classifies as “initiating, medial and concluding”. In the exposition, the initiating passage is from measures 1 to 8, the medial passage is from measures 9 to 31, and the concluding passage is from measures 32 to 37. The exposition and recapitulation both contain quasi-cadenzas that Haydn wrote into the score. The second movement, marked “andante con moto”, is in A major and time, and features multiple passages of syncopation. The finale returns to the sonata’s home key of C minor. Its opening is redolent of a minuet, but the movement is no minuet and trio. Instead it is a sonata form movement that develops with increasing intensity and difficulty, incorporating virtuosic cross-handed passages in which the left hand leaps from one extreme of the eighteenth-century keyboard to the other.

External links#

• *Performance of Sonata by Sonia Chan from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format